


blast radius

by sleeplessmiles



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Introspection, Post-2x16
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-15
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-03-17 23:27:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3547673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleeplessmiles/pseuds/sleeplessmiles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke walks the blast radius. Bellamy holds onto the threads of the new council.</p><p>Neither of them know how to pick up the pieces.</p><p>But they must.</p>
            </blockquote>





	blast radius

**Author's Note:**

> This episode destroyed me.

 

She goes to the dropship. 

It’s not a decision she actually makes – not consciously, anyway. The burden of decision-making has been upon Clarke for too long, and she struggles to bear the crippling weight of each and every one of those choices. She can’t add to it, now. Whatever happens, happens. She’s done.

She has to be.

So she knows this is pure instinct that’s pulling her back along the familiar path to their old home, carrying her back to her point of origin. Maybe, she contemplates distantly, if she returns to where it all began, she’ll be able to track precisely where she went wrong.

Because she did. Go wrong, that is. Somewhere, at some point, Clarke Griffin strayed from the path, and she hasn’t been able to find her way back. She isn’t even sure that she _can_ , anymore.

So she goes to the dropship. She wanders aimlessly through its barrenness, through its detritus and death. She sits by Wells’ grave, stares unseeingly at the inelegant mound of dirt – a silent, useless sentinel.

Everything is empty.

Just as the camp is deserted, devoid of life, so too is the place itself. It’s not a stretch for her to figure out why.

Home isn’t a place. It never has been, not even when they were all still on the Ark, confined to the earth’s orbit.

Home is people. Home is _her_ people.

And Clarke knows she's not worthy of being amongst them anymore.

The thing about losing herself, she thinks numbly, is that she’s sure she’d have noticed if it had happened all in one go. But the universe is not that merciful, the world not that kind. It was all fragments, little slivers of herself chipping off and littering the earth as she went on her way. How does she begin to pick up the pieces, when she doesn’t even know when she started to break? And even if she had any hope of retrieving them all, how would she find where they fit, where they slot into place in this person she is now? How can she plug the gaping chasms that have opened up inside of her?

How does she go back?

How can she ever, _ever_ return?

She seats herself at the dropship’s entrance, and instead of feeling safe – instead of feeling as though she can allow her guard to drop for a moment – she only feels one thing outside of the ever-present ache. She only feels untethered, and she knows it’s because she is. There is no counterbalance. She left it behind.

She left _him_ behind.

 _Looking to you, princess,_  Bellamy had told Clarke once, but there’s no princess to look to. Not anymore.

There’s only brokenness. 

There’s only her.

 

-

-

 

Bellamy can’t stop staring at the goddamned mountain.

He knows it’s stupid. He knows for sure he’d had the thought at least once – at least once an _hour_ , would probably be more accurate, as he’d crawled through the vents of its innards like some kind of trapped animal – that if he ever got out, he wouldn’t look back. He’d do everything within his power to put as much distance between his people and that… that _thing_ as possible. Hell, he’d trek them to the other side of the damn planet if it meant he never had to look at it again.

But now, he can’t forget it, can’t put it behind him. Not when it rises above the terrain still, in cruel defiance, summoning his attention every time he so much as steps foot outside his living quarters.

It taunts him.

How does it have the audacity to stand tall when it took so much from him? When it took so much from _all_ of them? When giants entered its accursed halls, the promise of better days glinting in their eyes, and emerged so lost, so broken?

Fuck Mount Weather, he thinks. Fuck it. _Fuck_ it.

Sometimes, he sits out at night, loosely glowering at the fucker in lieu of addressing what’s happened since securing their release. Sometimes, Octavia joins him.

Sometimes, Octavia talks.

‘Do you hate her?’ she asks him tonight, voice blunt, and he’s almost thankful for the abruptness of it. This is not the steely-faced warrior who strides around camp these days, commanding attention, rallying her people to do better, _be_ better.

This is simply his little sister.

But there’s something else to the bluntness, now, something more than simply understanding what he needs or intentionally riling him up. It’s born out of necessity. This new harshness comes from a deep comprehension of one’s own mortality.

(There’s no need to clarify who _she_ is. She occupies all of their thoughts, in one capacity or another. They all feel her absence; a phantom limb they can’t even begin to address.)

He takes his time in replying – not because the answer is even remotely grounded in the affirmative, but because he has no idea what Octavia needs from him here. He doesn’t think he’s ever known, not really.

But he’ll never stop trying.

‘Do _you_?’

When he hazards a glance at her, there’s a stubborn set to her jaw and a flintiness to her eyes. She kicks at the ground, sullen, and the tiniest bit of weight eases in his chest at the familiar reaction.

‘I thought I did,’ she mutters bitterly. ‘It’d be easier.’

Bellamy tenses his jaw.

‘She kept our people safe. She did what she had to.’ He hates that it sounds so much like an excuse falling from his lips, when it’s anything but. He hates that he’s had to repeat this so often, as though there had ever been another possibility for Clarke.

As though she’s even capable of acting in any other way.

‘Did she?’ Octavia asks quietly, and he knows she’s referring to the second part of his statement. To Tondc.

(He’s heard bits and pieces of the story, has seen the knowledge and grim acceptance in Abby’s gaze. It makes him _ache_.)

‘I don’t know anyone else who could have made those decisions,’ he tells Octavia now, voice gruff. When she replies, it’s with a mature steadiness to her gaze and a deep certainty in her voice.

‘ _You_ could have.’

‘No.’ His answer is immediate and uncompromising. ‘Not like that.’

Not like she did – the healer forced to take lives rather than nurture them. Forced to bear the weight of that terrible, terrible loss.

Alone.

He sighs. ‘Not without her.’

There’s a sudden clanking sound back at camp behind them, followed by peals of laughter, and the Blake siblings turn towards the noise as one. _Healing,_ he thinks. It’s the sound of people healing. He doesn’t know how anyone can truly heal when such a vital part of their camp is missing. Logically, he knows it’s adaptation. Evolution. Survival of the fittest.

Instinct. 

But Bellamy Blake isn’t ready to adapt to this particular change just yet.

‘Think she’ll be back?’ Octavia asks eventually. Absurdly, for the first time, Bellamy feels a wry smile spring to his face. He almost laughs at it.

‘You really think she trusts me to run things for that long?’

Octavia doesn’t laugh, though. Octavia only regards him seriously.

‘She does.’

Yeah. 

She does.

That’s part of the problem.

 

-

-

 

Tondc is her next stop.

She’ll retrace her steps, Clarke’s decided. Maybe she doesn’t know where, exactly, she’s dropped the pieces, but there’s no use covering new territory just yet. Following the beaten track is the only chance she’s got in this recovery effort.

Besides. It can’t be too hard.

All she has to do is follow the trail of destruction she’s left in her wake.

( _She’s soaked in Grounder blood._ )

 

-

-

 

Raven and Bellamy get drunk. It’s not a singular event so much as it is a standing date, and it’s not a standing date so much as it is one of them seeking out the other, a meaningful look on their face and a decent-sized vat of alcohol in their hands. 

Call it a mutual understanding, perhaps.

‘You didn’t see her,’ he croaks one night, once the moonshine has been flowing bitterly for a couple of hours. Raven doesn’t respond, only drags her gaze up to meet his. Her eyes are dark and fathomless, filled with endless pain and _knowledge_ , and Bellamy finds he can’t look directly at them. He studies the bottom of his cup instead, swallowing thickly.

‘When we first landed. She never made a grab for… for power, or anything like that. She just did what she had to do. To keep everyone breathing.’ 

He shakes his head, attempting to exorcise the demons of their younger selves. Because that’s what those people are, now. Demons. If he allows himself to be haunted by their less tainted counterparts, he won’t be able to face down each new morning. The losses will weigh him down completely, and Clarke will have left for no reason.

And this, above all else, he won’t allow. He won’t allow Clarke’s sacrifice to be in vain. 

Raven stretches out her braced leg, wincing a little, but offers nothing more, so Bellamy continues.

‘That’s why everyone follows her, and that’s why they always will. She’ll always do what she has to.’

He might be drunk. He doesn’t really know anymore. It hurts just as much with alcohol as it does without, though, so he honestly doesn’t even give a shit.

‘That’s gotta suck,’ is what Raven eventually provides, punctuating the statement with a shrug and a long gulp of whatever poison they’ve had brewed up for them this week. He looks across at her, studying her profile as she stares up at the skies.

The skies they used to call home.

(Funny, he thinks. Places haven’t felt like home for a long time.)

‘You do what you have to all the time, you never get to do what you want to.’

That pulls him up short.

What does Clarke Griffin want?

She’d dreamed of this place, of the ground. They all had, of course, but he recalls the gleam in her eyes. It was something more for her. He knows she’s an artist, knows that she sees things differently to how he does. Clarke sees the poetry in colours, finds a different meaning to landscapes beyond the simple aesthetic appreciation Bellamy has himself. It had been a source of comfort to her.

She’d _dreamed_ of this, and look what happened.

He wonders what it’s like, to have your utopia come crashing down around you. Worse still: to believe it happened at your own behest.

And Bellamy’s never been one for utopias, but grim realities? He’s had enough for ten lifetimes.

He wouldn’t wish them upon anyone. 

Grimacing, he takes another drink.

 

-

-

 

Clarke is familiar with the concept of a blast radius. She’s read about it extensively. Everyone had, of course, in their mandatory history lessons, but she figures very few people would have the practical experience she now does.

She stands at the foot of Mount Weather.

The epicentre.

That’s what she’s been doing, she realises. She’s been walking the blast radius in reverse, from the point of least destruction to most destruction.

Those who lost their lives in the dropship explosion had been directly attacking her people.

The dead at Tondc allowed her an outside chance to save her people.

But here –

She swallows thickly.

Here, the only bodies are innocents, felled by her own hand. 

Her ancestors had dropped bombs, but Clarke knows now that the apparatus doesn’t matter as much as the damage caused. The annihilation inflicted.

 _I am become Death_ , she thinks. _Destroyer of worlds._

She feels violently ill, but she won’t allow herself to be sick.

(She doesn’t _deserve_ it.) 

Instead, Clarke Griffin squares her shoulders and re-enters the mountain.

 

-

-

 

Eventually, things settle into a new kind of normal at Camp Jaha. A holding pattern, Bellamy privately thinks, but a normal nonetheless. The old council attempts to pull everyone back together, to mend the cracks and fissures in the community, but there’s only so much they can do.

The new council is the only council with authority, even without one of their co-leaders. Everybody knows that.

So, the new council makes plans. Octavia and Lincoln set about training their people, equipping them with the knowledge they need to protect themselves and others. To _survive._ Raven helps with decision-making, as does Monty, and with Wick and Jasper they manage to eke out an impressive engineering and technology base.

And Bellamy?

He holds them together, he supposes. They still look to him for guidance; everyone does. Kane and Abby defer to him more and more, recognising the influence he holds over the camp, but it always feels unnatural. It always feels wrong.

He was never meant to make these decisions alone.

 _I can’t do this without you_ , Clarke had sworn to him once, eons ago. At the time, Bellamy had needed to hear it, so he hadn’t really considered the full implications of the statement. But now, he realises how truly wrong she was. Now, everything within him rebels against the very idea.

 _You can_ , he insists. Clarke. _Clarke_. You can do this without me.

You _can_.

_But you don’t have to._

_Let me help you. Let me share the burden._

_Just please, please come home._

 

-

-

 

It’s when she finally completes the terrible task of laying the mountain people to rest – buried in the very ground they’d always longed to see – that Clarke realises where she now must go. What she now must do, above all else.

This can’t have been in vain.

She can’t have slaughtered these innocent people in vain.

The only way to prevent this bloodshed from being futile, to make this count, is to secure her people’s safety – absolutely, irrevocably secure it, once and for all.

Because she knows now that absolution can never truly be hers, not after what she’s done, but she can bear that. She can bear that, as long as her people don’t suffer for her sins. And Bellamy can keep them safe, of course he can, but he can't stop the threats at their source.

Clarke can do that.

She can do this one, final thing for them.

For everything they’ve lost.

For everything they can now become. 

Steeling herself, Clarke turns her face towards Polis.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!! You can find me on tumblr at 'imperfectlychaotic' where I am still having a not-so-mild breakdown over Clarke Griffin. There's no end in sight.


End file.
